• Water (1 gallon per person per day)
• Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
• Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
• Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
• Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
• Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
• Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
• First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado orhurricane)

I remember the first time I walked into the store, and asked in a hushed voice “Do you have any old books from around 1900? I’m looking for something quite special… The sort of books where you can see pictures of men and women… you know… doing crafts and engineering?”

A short while later, I was walking down the street with a discrete brown paper parcel that held copies of books with provocative titles like ‘Machineries Handbook’, ‘Modern Electric Wiring’ and ‘Handbook of Embroidery’. I felt slightly embarrassed. What if people saw me coming out of the shop, and realized the package under my arm contained folios of explicit diagrams about obsolete technology?

While I still love antique volumes filled with practical advice, and my heart still flutters when I catch a glimpse of leather poking out from underneath a pile of knitting patterns, it isn’t always appropriate to launch headlong into a pile of books.

Thankfully, the internet has evolved in the ten years since I made my first detour into vintage crafts, and the excellent folks over at Project Guttenberg have make it easier for me to fulfil my sordid desire for vintage craft and engineering knowledge.

If -like me- you are a discerning crafter or maker with particular tastes, I suggest you take a look at the following bookshelves on Project Guttenberg:

ART: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Art_%28Bookshelf%29
CRAFT: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Crafts_%28Bookshelf%29
ENGINEERING: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Engineering_%28Bookshelf%29
FORESTRY: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Forestry
CAMPING: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Camping
HORTICULTURE: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Horticulture_%28Bookshelf%29

Looking at an online copy might not be as exciting as finding a hidden gem in a second hand book store, but there are some excellent titles to read through, on subjects as diverse as bromide photography, bookbinding, and architecture. Go on… I won’t tell if you don’t.

Only with Inkodye can you create this incredibly easy and rewarding DIY project! Because Inkodyes are truly photographic you can use them with black & white negatives to create your very own photo-printed silk ribbon. 

Use your ribbon in your hair, around your waist on a summer dress or cut it into sections and give them away as adorable bookmarks!

Total tutorial time: 15 minutes

Used in this project: Inkodye Violet

Materials. Violet Inkodye, foam brush, pins, silk ribbon, b&w negatives and a work surface board

Making your own negatives. You can buy a B&W disposable camera and take your own shots! Important Note: High contrast negatives are needed for this project to work so try to overexpose the pics you take! You can also request “push processing” at your local film development lab to ensure higher contrast negatives.

Prepare. Cut your ribbon to the size of the negatives you’d like to print

Position. Lay your ribbon down onto a board that you’ll be able to move out into the sun

Pour. Apply your Inkodye straight from the bottle, we recommend not diluting for this project

Brush. Using a regular ol’ foam brush make sure your Inkodye is evenly applied

Place. Get your negative placed properly, make sure you put it SHINY side down so as not to smear it

Pin. Using push pins, pin your project to the board to keep the negative in contact and so it can’t blow away!

Smooth. Using the slight stickyness of the wet ribbon rub the negative down until it is smooth

Take into the sun. This is where the magic happens, watch your photos develop right before your eyes!

Wait. Leave your project in the sun for at least 5 minutes, up to 12 minutes in cloudy weather

Uncover. In a shady indoor area uncover your masterpiece!

Wash. Wash vigorously in HOT soapy water, preferably use a strong textile soap like synthrapol. If you do not wash enough your project may continue to develop after it is dry.

Dry. Dry your project without heat, just lay it out indoors (not in the sun) and let it dry completely

Enjoy! Use your beautiful custom ribbon however you want – be creative!

“Every time Google+ suspends an account of someone I follow, it becomes less useful to me. I don’t want a telephone system with knobs on, I want a social platform where I can interact with the people that matter to me.

Not every person in the world is a white, westernised Christian with a first name and a last name. Some people only have ONE name. Some people have multiple names – which one should they use? What about people who use their stage name, or writers and artists that have a name that isn’t their birth name, but is the name that they use in every day life?

Google, you are either being incredibly stupid, or incredibly draconian. Some people have very long and complicated names that I can’t remember, or can’t remember how to spell. And, lets not forget that I know more than one person with the same name. Not everyone has a meaningful photograph of themselves as their profile picture – how am I supposed to differentiate between people at a glance if you don’t let them add extra information about themselves in their name?

Take the example of Limor Fried’s account. It has been suspended even though it includes the name Limor Fried, and Ladyada, which is a legitimate name used by Limor on a daily basis.

A large number of people know me as Monkeysailor – yet I’m unable to connect with them on google+ because if I advertise myself as Monkeysailor then I risk getting my account suspended.

Google is a master at algorithmics, but how about you stop using algorithms and idiots to suspend accounts and start using your brains? Why not let users decide whether to mark an account as inappropriate, instead of just guessing?”

This sums up how I feel about the situation, and I’ll be voting with my feet and just leaving the Google+ sphere if things don’t improve in the near future.

And, once that idea becomes reality, human nature kicks in. We can not resist the opportunity to tweak, modify, update, and refactor our designs over and over again – usually until we break something or lose sight of what we were trying to achieve.

A traditional artist once told me that they spent about 5 years learning how to paint, and the next twenty learning when to stop. Where then, as coders and makers, do we draw the line? Here are my guidelines for design:

1. Profile Your Design

You cannot fight a hidden enemy, you need to identify problem areas in your designs before you can fix them. Use profiling tools to find out where you need to concentrate your efforts in code, and in the real world.

2. Excessive Optimization is the Root of All Evil

You only need to optimize your code to a point where further optimization will achieve no further useful increase in performance. If the benefit of the optimization is negligible, then the process of optimization is probably redundant.

3. You Can Not Optimize Everything

Optimization is all about striking the right balance. Some engines need to run very fast, while others need to use the minimum possible amount of resources. You cannot design something that is high-performance in every possible way. There will always be a trade-off between resources, speed, or accuracy.

4. Be Firm of Purpose

You have to choose an optimization goal for your design before you can start improving it. The goal should be realistic, and should not be longer than a single sentence. Once the optimization goal has been set, you should stick to it and not get sidetracked by other, less important considerations. You can not build a castle if you spend ten years designing the door handle.

5. The Algorithm is More Important than The Syntax

Algorithms are based in mathematics, and will remain constant regardless of the language that they are implemented in. Understanding an algorithm gives you a chance to improve a system before it exists in the real world. Examine your algorithms in detail before you build anything, and you will avoid the code/engineering equivalent of painting yourself into a corner.

6. Sometimes Optimization is Not Enough

There are cases when the route to a working prototype involves more than just optimization. You will either have to wait for the state of technology to advance, or start getting creative with what you already have.

Multiprocessing techniques, resource clustering, and GPU manipulation are brute-force solutions to computational problems, while high octane fuels, composite materials, and high torque motors are there if you need them in the real world. Sometimes the only solution is to go and get a bigger hammer.

7. Trust in Grok, not Zen

The word grok has its origins in the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, by Robert A. Heinlein. Roughly translated, grok is a complete and exhaustive knowledge of a particular subject.

Zen, on the other hand, refers to a blinding flash of inspiration or sudden understanding of a situation. Zen can sometimes occur as the result of deep grok, but is often just the result of a hunch that happens to pay off at the right time.

There is a temptation with armchair mechanics and programmers to work through a broken device or piece of code and start changing things at random. Blindly hoping that one of the things you change will fix the problem, is not a solution. Hoping for a Zen moment is no substitute for actually understanding what is happening, and the only way to completely understand is through learning the theory behind what you are doing.

8. Implicit Functionality is Better than Explicit

In the real world, if a suitable device is readily available and well within your resources to acquire, it is not wise to design your own version from scratch. Common components (motors, gears, resistors, transistors, etc…) can be swapped out quickly in the event of failure, but a custom made part will take much longer to replace.

When programming, an implied loop written in C or Assembly will be faster than an explicit loop written in an interpretative language like Python or PHP. Don’t create an explicit loop when an implied loop is available, you will just waste time and energy reinventing a much less efficient version of the wheel.

9. Do Not Let Your Loyalty to a Particular Tool Hold You Back

Many people are loyal to a particular tool, product, or programming language – even to the point where they will make extra work for themselves by using that tool in place of another. Tools and programming languages don’t get lonely, and an Arduino will only cry into it’s beer if you program it to. There is no need to feel guilty about abandoning a favorite tool if there is another that will do the job better, because electromechanical love is unconditional.

10. You Are Not Alone

The making community is large, and there are always people that are ready to help a fellow maker. If you can’t figure out a particular problem for yourself, and the books don’t help, then you can always find someone that you can ask within the community.

Just make sure that you remember to give back to the community. If you have solved a problem, document it for other people to see. If you found some documentation confusing, consider rewriting so that other people can understand it more easily.

The more that you can give to the community, the more the community will be able to give back.

Short Review:

The book is articulate, informative, and technically diverse. I consider this book to be the most important and comprehensive print resource to have been produced for the Arduino, and I highly recommend it to anyone that has either used or intends to use the Arduino platform for interfacing with the real world.

General Review

The Arduino Cookbook is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in using computers to sense and interact with the real world. The book employs a “Problem, Solution, Discussion” format that will be familiar to readers of other volumes in the Cookbook series. Working on the assumption that the reader has no prior knowledge of hardware or software engineering, the Ardino cookbook presents a comprehensive journey through all aspects of the Arduino.

The first three chapters of the book provide an introduction to the Arduino platform, to the principles of programming on an Arduino. Readers with a grounding in hardware and software can safely skim through these chapters and rejoin the book at chapter four, where the real fun starts.

Beginning with a nice easy chapter on how to get the Arduino talking to a computer via the serial module, the book runs through the practicalities of digital and analog input and output, audio and visual output, using external displays, controlling external devices, setting up wireless communications and ethernet networking, and a whole host of other topics that can be investigated by taking a look at the table of contents at O’Reilly’s catalog page. You can also download all of the sketches and example code from the O’Reilly catalog page, so there’s no need to baulk at the prospect of typing in all of the sketches from the book.

The final three chapters of the book take the reader into more advanced aspects of the Arduino platform. Using and creating libraries to expand the functionality of the Arduino is covered in one chapter, and are dealing with advanced code to optimize sketches is dealt with in another. This diversion into the areas of code that are normally abstracted by the Arduino wrapper is particularly interesting to advanced programmers, and those who want to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the platform.

Finally, the reader gets a trip right into the heart of the Arduino hardware, looking at parts of the chip that can not be normally accessed by the Arduino language. Again, this chapter will be of interest to more advanced hackers that want direct access to the registers and timers of the Arduino’s Atmega processor.

New users need not fear the complexity of the latter chapters, because the Arduino Cookbook contains a hefty appendix with a plethora of additional information supporting the concepts and practical points discussed in the main section of the book.

Last year, my Husband and I attended the first annual Maker Faire in North Carolina. My husband, Angus, had already attended numerous Maker Faire events around the country, but this was to be my first time and it was amazing! I had never seen so many crafters, makers, machines or tech type stuff under one roof before. It was a cornucopia of brilliance and I gazed at each display in wonder as I made my through each exhibit. There were toys to play with and buttons to push – even things to build!

Tucked away in the back however, was a display with tables laid out with mounds of what can only be described as textural chaos. Fabrics of all sorts, colors, shapes and patterns were heaped on the tables. It was quite colorful and as I’ve always been easily distracted by pretty things, it was inevitable I would gravitate towards it. The display booth was for a company in Durham, North Carolina called The Scrap Exchange.

As I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t just fabrics, but plastic bottles, fuzzy pipe cleaners, boxes and all manner of… well …  ‘stuff’.  A table had even been set up as a children’s crafting area. Being the curious sort, I approached the woman behind one of the tables and asked her what exactly The Scrap Exchange did. She took the time to explain to me that everything I was seeing in that great, colorful jumble was nothing more than reusable items to craft with and that people donated what they considered ‘trash’ or ‘junk’ and The Scrap Exchange found new uses for it all!

Now I had heard the terms ‘reusable’, ‘recyclable’, and ‘renewable resources’ before, but this was taking it to a whole new level. I never would have thought of taking ripped down wallpaper and using it to decorate old picture frames and I most certainly never would have thought that a donated bag of concrete would find new life down the line in a local art gallery. The Scrap Exchange was (and still is) all about finding new uses for our ‘junk’ and turning it into art.

The Scrap Exchange had made me re-think every little thing I had thrown away recently and wonder if everything I had hauled to our dump did indeed have more purpose. It was a sobering thought. Could that box of broken dishes I found in the attic been a mosaic patio table? Maybe those old, worn window casings and frames in the garage could have transformed into lighted yard art. I do know that as of right now, I look at my ‘trash’ a bit differently and ponder the potential usefulness of things before I throw them away. They have inspired me to think outside the proverbial box and that’s always a good thing!

If you’re looking to be inspired, or need a new idea for a project, check out the The Scrap Exchange. (Hint: They accept donations too!) They hold classes and workshops and even have a room for children’s birthday parties filled with everything you could imagine a child creating with. It’s nothing short of a crafter’s or artist’s paradise and a great resource!

Just when I was ready to scrap the whole idea of Japanese themed invitations, I re-connected with an old friend from High School, Angela Landino-Carter. As a self-professed ‘Craft Junkie’, Angela had been crafting on her own for years, but when she and her friend, Sharon Jordan, started sharing their projects and ideas with each other at work, the idea for “Think it… Ink it” was born and they were soon creating custom cards for the masses.

What makes Think it… Ink it! so unique is that Angela and Sharon carried the concept of promoting and encouraging creativity into their business. Not only can you order custom cards designed by Angela and Sharon, but you can also attend one of their many workshops and learn how to design and create your own cards, as well as other projects. They also sell kits for fun home projects, with several kits geared specifically toward kids.

Needless to say, what they were doing piqued my interest right away and I immediately consulted with her on some custom invitations for my daughter’s party. The end result was beautiful and just what my daughter had imagined.

Evy’s Custom Invitation

Check out Angela’s blog to learn more about their workshops, current projects and services. Be sure to watch some of the video tutorials she has posted too!

OK, so every year I try to make my own cards, but run out of steam half way through my list and end up buying the rest. I can’t help feeling bad for people whose names fall into the second half of the alphabet (maybe they’re secretly relieved not to get my home made beauties, but I shall never know).

This year my cunning plan was to make lino prints, because a) I love the way they look and b) I thought I could run off a huge batch without giving myself a nervous breakdown. Also, I have fond memories of doing these at school. I bought a lino tool for with some different heads for a few pounds and an A5 sized piece of lino. I also got a roller and some lino ink. Apart from that, all you need is paper, a sheet of glass, some parcel tape, a rolling pin and your tetanus jabs up to date. No, seriously, CHECK. Turns out I had a complete re-run of school days and stabbed myself in the hand almost instantly. My jabs are up to date these days though, so, phew.

Despite this small setback, the rest of the lino carving went surprisingly well. I drew my design on the lino in pencil, and then carved out the bits I wanted to stay white. I chose a folk art motif which was pretty easy to do, and if my birdy looks more like an enormous killer robot bird then, hey, it’s a naive style. Right? I rollered the dark red oil based ink out onto a piece of glass (pinched from a picture frame for the purpose, later cleaned and replaced) and made sure the ink was thick enough to be a bit tacky before rollering the lino cut itself. I placed the paper on the wet lino (copy paper worked fine) and used a rolling pin to press it down super firmly. Then voila! With a flourish I pulled off my first print! And my second, and my third… Rollering the lino again each time, and hanging the wet prints up on a clothes line until they were dry. Once they’d dried (longer than you think with oil based paints) I trimmed them down and mounted them onto folded cards. Much more fun than usual and I think I might make it to the end of my address book this year. Won’t they be surprised!